[Game Update] - 295825

Release Date: 11/22/2018

Update Information:

Hello my fine spacefaring friends!

Today’s "Quality of Life" (QoL) Upgrade marks a bit of a departure from past Upgrades as our team has begun moving into a new phase of development, going back over all the game content that has been implemented to date, scouring bug reports and forum threads, and ultimately working on polish, performance, filling in holes and implementing missing features.

The main focus of QoL Mk 1 is eliminating major bugs and improving the clarity of the early game for new players, in addition to starting work on the many Quality of Life concerns that have been brought up in these forums (thank-you for your reports!). As these improvements continue, future Upgrades will start looking at systems balance and behaviour, Duplicant AI, and some final content additions.

A public Testing Branch for this Upgrade will be available as they have been in the past, with the change that testing periods will now run for 3 weeks instead of the regular 2. Our intention is to provide additional time for your feedback to be heard before these changes go out to the world. (Please note that the Testing Branch will continue to have additional crash reporting enabled which will impact your game’s run performance. Finalized performance improvements won't be noticeable until the Upgrade releases to everyone.).

Duplicants will no longer get stuck trying to work at unreachable Ranching Stations

Duplicants are less likely to choose an incompletable fetch over a completable one. Prevents a lot of the "dancing" Duplicants

Duplicants no longer get stuck if there is a Mourn chore but they can't reach it

Attack orders are properly restored on load

Duplicants no longer get stuck on a Fetch chore forever if there is an Attack chore

Fixed crash when Dupes try putting on an Exosuit

Jet Suit Duplicants will no longer "bounce" in place

Duplicants will no longer wake up to cheer if they're on a daytime sleep schedule

No matter how bad a Duplicant's stats, they'll never work slower than 50% speed (75% for construction).

New hats for the Astronaut Jobs

Jet Suit locomotion and multitool usage now has a full animation set

Hair should no longer flicker when Dupes get into and out of bed with a hat

Added in some eyes that were missing from various Duplicant animations

Disease idles and expressions are more consistent with the actual disease

Some movement transitions from Fire Poles to Ladders and vice versa have been added

Duplicants will return their suits when idle

Critters and Plants

Shove Voles no longer crash the game upon dying

Shove Voles no longer show as “entombed” when underground, since that's their happy place

Shove Voles can no longer move through doors and tiles made of refined metal, or other very hard materials

Critters on walls and ceilings should no longer fall due to gravity

Shove Voles are better at avoiding Meteors

Shove Voles are more aware of what kind of ground they are on/in for movement and animation

Hatches are no longer invisible on load

Meteors no longer launch critters around because of numerous unintended effects

Shove Voles no longer get stuck if they can't find anything diggable

Plants no longer consume water if wilted on load

Bagged Critters no longer fall when carried by a Duplicant

Fixed Shove Vole head colour

Added art for the Gas Grass seeds and harvested plant

Full Baby Shove Vole anim set added

Shove Vole plays correct animation when emerging from the ground

Added Shove Vole sound effects

Frost Buns once again use grains, and not plants, as an ingredient

Sleet Wheat seeds should always show as "Cooking Ingredients" and not "Seeds" in the resource list and storage containers/fridges.

Buildings

Neural Vacillators can now be properly assigned after recharging

Neural Vacillators are now prioritizable

Hooked up recharging animations for Neural Vacillator

Destroying a rotated door no longer lets the Robo-Miner dig out adjacent floors

Lavatories, Showers, and Sinks no longer get immediately blocked if you run the pipe "across" the output port by storing the last "use" in an output storage

Fixed a crash when trying to build outside the game grid

Oil Wells correctly save/load their depressurization percentage

Fixed many buildings still accepting delivery when entombed or otherwise disabled

Smart Storage now actually consumes power

Manual Generators should no longer allow multiple Duplicants to operate them

Metal Refineries will stop working if output pipe is blocked

Metal Refinery calculation for the amount of heat added to the coolant is now much more correct and stable

The order of placement Bridges and Tiles shouldn't matter anymore

Telescopes shade the Duplicants working at them so they won't get sunburned

Bunker Doors no longer have access controls

Egg Incubators now have a "Continuous" option

Liquid Reservoir meter now shows as empty when the building is empty

Added Liquid Reservoir sound effects

Finalized art for the Virtual Planetarium

Improved animations for the Jet Suit Checkpoint

Jet Suit Checkpoint full animations hooked up

Canister Filler animations now match the functionality of the building

Updated Canister Filler sound effects

Fixed layering for Heavi-Watt Joint Plate

Telescope "Finished Working" animation should play correctly

Space Cadet Centrifuge, and several other buildings, should only play its final animation once

Auto-Sweeper animations play once again

Robo-Miner laser sounds added

Virtual Planetarium sound effects

Algae Terrarium has new "emptying" animation

Elements and Materials

Fullerene can now be stored in Storage Bins

Various elements are more correctly sorted in the elements list and in Storage Bin filters. Only affects new bases or elements which haven't yet been discovered in a base.

Food items now have unlimited stack size (instead of 10), but will only stack with other foods that have a rot within 10%. This will help with massive amounts of Sleet Wheat, though the wheat will have to be emptied and reinserted into Storage Bins in order for the restacking to trigger.

Added "Industrial" entities to Sandbox spawner

Lowered freezing point of Super Coolant

Rocketry

Astronauts no longer lose their consumables settings

Astronauts no longer lose their skill levels if the game is loaded while they're in space

Critters and Plants can once again be returned from Space

Rocket Modules can no longer be deconstructed or melted while the rocket is in space

Command Module won't melt the contained atmosuit while in flight

Rocket Fuel tanks are insulated, so the steam won't condense while fuelling

It is now possible to select a space destination for Analysis after the previous one has completed

Fixed various crashes when the Command Module lands and tries creating the stored Duplicant

Rocket destinations are more stable, so it should no longer be possible to swap a destination mid-flight, or for two rockets to share a destination by accident.

Selection mechanics and icons on Starmap screen improved to make it more clear which rocket is going to which destination

Rocket Fuel Tanks and Oxidizers no longer drop all their fuel on slider adjustment. If the slider is set below the current amount stored, a Duplicant will come empty the difference.

Rocket travel times are now based on the simulation’s progress, so cycle counts will match up even at high speeds or with bad lag.

Rocket Logic has been reworked: The Space Scanner now turns off when the rocket is grounded, is on when launching, off while in space, on when close to landing (based on dish network quality), and on while landing. The Command Capsule only emits a signal while grounded, ready, or while taking off.

Fixed a possible crash when building a new rocket

Added a fuel meter to the Steam Engine

Oxidizer tanks have been split into Solid and Liquid Oxidizer Tanks. Existing rockets may require reconfiguring.

Database

Fix broken Database links in the descriptions of the Gas Grass and Gassy Moo

Adding Database entries describing different game systems at a high level

More POI buildings are inspectable

Updated Critter Database entries

Multiple new discoverable lore entries

Disabled incomplete/nonfunctional entries

Simulations

Entombed ore won't create a cell if the mass is too low now

Fixed issue where buildings that produced elements would sometimes start producing other elements after a save/load

Mass is no longer lost when multiple items stack together on the same frame

Conveyor Receptacles will allow a single item to exceed their storage limit so they won't stall the whole line

Various buildings are stricter about disallowing inputs and outputs to overlap, such as Heavi-Watt Joint Plates. These have never worked correctly, but now at least you won't be able to create new overlaps. If you correct any existing overlaps, a save/load will be required to put the game back into a consistent state.

Heavi-Watt Wire can no longer pass through Pneumatic Doors

Heavi-Watt Joint Plates can connect properly even if they were a "replacement" for an existing tile

Fixed crash when destroying a building that had or has overlapping ports

Duplicants exhaling in shallow water will no longer "break" the puddle with their CO2

Duplicants will no longer fall through Pitcher Pumps

Hypothermia, Heat Stroke, and Sunburn are now "minor diseases" which don't require a medical cot, and last a shorter time.

Path finding will no longer try wrapping around the map

UI and Presentation

Selected Object and Sidescreens

Major revision to the recipe screen for fabrication buildings like the Cook Station and Refinery. Currently they all use the same UI. Now, the UI allows setting a number or infinite amount of any recipe, and recipes without ingredients will be skipped automatically. This UI will be further developed during the testing period.

Fixed egg icons for critter morphs

Updated Drecko description to mention their unusual diet

Clarified launch checklist for Empty Cargo Bay

Main Game View

Items in storage are no longer hoverable/selectable from the main view.

Prevent "ghost" progress bars from cluttering things up

Tools and Menus

Building material selection is saved to the save file so you don't have a surprise after a load

Building material selection scrolls into view when a building is selected

Added in some "ground" to the Robo-Miner blueprint art to imply it goes against something when rotated

Wires and pipes no longer play a hookup sound when dragging over a port of a different kind

Situational Awareness

When a building is newly researched the <!> icon shows on the building as well as the menu, until that building is clicked.

"What this Duplicant is Doing" status item now always shows at the top of the status list

Calories Available in the main HUD now displays calories per food rather than count

Calories Available is now sorted

Oxygen Generation tutorial message has been split into two notifications and reworded for early game (“Need an oxygen source” message) and mid game (“Not enough oxygen production” message)

Tooltip for active infections has been cleaned up

Fix broken Drowning tooltip

Better tooltip for death due to low health

Info Screens

Visual distinction between planets that can and can't be analyzed has been improved

Added descriptions for space destinations

Jobs Screen is now bound to "J" by default

Text Cleanup

General cleanup of many building descriptions

Clarifying early-game tooltips and notifications

Renaming of several early-game buildings to help make their meaning more clear

Fixed duplicated Transformer descriptions

More element names in building descriptions link to the Database

Localization

Meteor strings are now localizable

More space and rocketry strings can be localized

Frontend

Startup screen displays better at more resolutions

Music

Three new "Ambient Songs" added to increase musical variation between existing Standard Songs

Systems

Various unique IDs were being reused by accident, resulting in mysterious errors with assignments, object spawning, element spawning, effects appearing, and more. Numerous hard-to-reproduce bugs may have been resolved by this.

Fixed crash when writing Database unlocks to hard drive

Fixed a crash if the game initializes with a tiny resolution

Fresh Linux installs would often get stuck on a white or black screen caused by a strange resolution change. Resolution is now forced on startup to resolve this

Animations will no longer flicker when a path is completed

Fixed looping animations sometimes not looping

Optimizations

Optimizations to path probing and path finding

Reduced memory usage for many effects and temporary objects

Improved performance of object stacking

Reduce memory usage of Database entries

Stop calculating gravities for objects which aren't falling

Improve memory usage of a variety of situations, which will also help with lag spikes.

Reduce the memory usage of some debug and logging code

Flow of gasses/liquids in pipes is now multithreaded for improved CPU usage

Building temperature calculations are greatly sped up

Modding

Please bear in mind: the game is not stable enough at this point for us to recommend modding, but we're starting to make changes with modding in mind. The changes below are mostly focused around taking datastructures that were hard to extend (enums and fixed-length arrays) and make them into lists and hashes so that modders can push their own data into the game without too much headache.

Tools Menu: Tools is now a List, and helper function CreateToolCollection added.

Plan Screen (build menu): Categories are now hashes instead of enums so more can be added.

Overlay Menu initialization is easier to hook

Overlays are now hashes instead of enums so more can be added

Filter screen shows mod-added elements

Removed unused fields from Substances for clarity

Improve Database error logging for bad keys

Adjust startup sequence so that mod-loaded anims have a chance to register

Send more mod loading errors to the log file

Startup errors have a better chance of showing a crash screen

Added ModUtil function that ensures all required assets for an anim are loaded

Added base materials for solids and liquids to make stubbing in materials easier

Will try loading 'elements.json' from mod folders. This data can overwrite existing element values, or add new elements.

Added ModUtil function for creating new substances correctly

Localization templates (strings.pot) and translations (strings.po) can be loaded from mod folders. Will make distributing translation mods easier, as well as allow mods themselves to be translated.

Assets from Assets.cs are now lists instead of arrays, so mod assets can easily be included and used by existing systems.

Added special path to Assets (via Assets.ModLoadedKAnims) that simplifies registering of anims from mods

"Open testing" means players get to test-drive new content early and give us feedback and suggestions before it goes live. Because this is an unfinished and in active development version of the upgrade being released on December 13th, it's pretty likely you'll encounter bugs, crashes or balance issues while playing these builds. We'll try to fix any problems that crop up as quickly as we can, but it's possible you'll lose progress in your games while playing on the Testing branch.

Regarding performance, the Testing branch has additional debugging tools enabled to help us track down crashes. This makes the game run more slowly than the live version of the game.

Please also be aware that once a save is loaded in the Testing branch, it cannot be reopened again in the previous Live branch or previous builds.

What do I do if I find a crash or a bug?

Post it up on the Bug Tracker and we'll fix it as soon as we can. If you can attach a copy of your save file to your report, that helps us even more as we can pinpoint the source of problem more quickly.

Do I have to play the open testing build?

Nope! If you'd prefer to only play a stable build, you can continue to play in the current Early Access branch until the QoL Upgrade Mk 1 releases in full on December 13th. Playing the Open Testing build isn't necessary, but it helps us a lot to receive your feedback and reports - if you're interested, try it out!

How do I become an open tester?

There's no sign up or registration for becoming an open tester. If you own Oxygen Not Included and want to join the Testing Branch, all you have to do is play the Open Testing build on Steam.

How do I play the open testing build?

You can switch your branch on Steam using the instructions below:

Spoiler

How to change branches in Oxygen Not Included (Steam)

In Steam, click on Library > Games.

Scroll down to Oxygen Not Included.

Right-click and select Properties.

Go to the BETAS tab.

In the dropdown, select the name of the branch you want to play. In this case, the branch name is "qol_1_testing"

This branch does not require a password.

In that same Properties window, go to the Local Files tab and press "Verify Integrity Of Game Cache."

Your game will be updated to the the previous branch.

Launch and play Oxygen Not Included

That's it! We hope you'll enjoy this taste of what's to come, and thank-you for your help testing out the new Upgrade!